Most of Tamriel's Landmass Generated Beyond Skyrim's Borders

[CorneliusFunk]

I just came across this, having not considered it was done in Oblivion too. Sorry if there is already a thread for this; I couldn't find one. In short, with the usual .ini tweak as well as good ol' tcl, beyond the borders there are some interesting things to see, some of them quite well rendered despite being beyond even distant land. So far it seems the majority of Tamriel is there, or at least portions of High Rock, Hammerfell, Cyrodiil and Morrowind, including Vvardenfell, despite its destruction (in whatever sense of the word it was).

A short news post: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11 ... eam+RSS%29.

An in-depth experiment by a gamer - very cool: http://ppsh-41.tumblr.com/post/13145143 ... nto-skyrim.

Another gaming site news post: http://kotaku.com/5861752/skyrim-contai ... d-cyrodiil.

Needless to say there's discussion amongst the fans there about the meaning behind it all. I doubt they would have the time for level designers to generate the entire landmass just for the hell of it, and although the scales are of course different from Oblivion's and Morrowind's, it seems to me like they are "shaping up" surrounding spaces to get a feel of it for future projects, be they entire provinces for sequels or just DLC/expansion content.

Edit: of course as with Oblivion the nearest edge of the border can actually be quite detailed (as seen in the Tumblr post above) while everything beyond gradually declines in quality, becoming flat-textured blobs.

So, what are peoples' thoughts?

[soda popinski]

Very interesting. I would personally guess they are there as possibly DLC, since once they decide what they want to do exactly, it would be much quicker to throw things on an already existing landmass rather than design the entire thing from scratch



Here is a video of someone touring it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlbA2qiXsf0

[AKB]

It could be a gift to the modders.
It could be that they were forced to design the entire world due to some kind of limitation with the 3D map.
It could of been that Bethesda just wanted a 3D version of the entire continent to use as a basis for future projects.

Exactly how far does this go? Like, could you hypothetically go to the Sumerset Isles? It doesn't show everything, though it's possible not everything has been explored yet.

[CorneliusFunk]

It could be a gift to the modders.
It could be that they were forced to design the entire world due to some kind of limitation with the 3D map.
It could of been that Bethesda just wanted a 3D version of the entire continent to use as a basis for future projects.

Exactly how far does this go? Like, could you hypothetically go to the Sumerset Isles? It doesn't show everything, though it's possible not everything has been explored yet.

Both a flexible spatial template for Beth and a gift to the modders seems reasonable to me.

Some sources say it's the whole of Tamriel, down to Solstheim and a detailed Vvardenfell, and even the tiny isles around Bravil. Others state that it's only the surrounding provinces that are properly rendered, the ones mentioned in my first post.

I'll tweak it to try and find out for us just how extensive it is, and take some screens of course. What better way to spend a dark Scottish autumn night?

[soda popinski]

It could be a gift to the modders.
It could be that they were forced to design the entire world due to some kind of limitation with the 3D map.
It could of been that Bethesda just wanted a 3D version of the entire continent to use as a basis for future projects.

Exactly how far does this go? Like, could you hypothetically go to the Sumerset Isles? It doesn't show everything, though it's possible not everything has been explored yet.

Both a flexible spatial template for Beth and a gift to the modders seems reasonable to me.

Some sources say it's the whole of Tamriel, down to Solstheim and a detailed Vvardenfell, and even the tiny isles around Bravil. Others state that it's only the surrounding provinces that are properly rendered, the ones mentioned in my first post.

I'll tweak it to try and find out for us just how extensive it is, and take some screens of course. What better way to spend a dark Scottish autumn night?

I put this video up there, its a guy flying over it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlbA2qiXsf0

[CorneliusFunk]

Okay, I'm just checking out that video now. I'd seen there was a video up but I wasn't sure if it included the whole of Tamriel or just portions.

[Fathis]

http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/forum/vi ... b6180e6357

This map is pretty accurate, I have watched the videos and it seems to be mostly right.

[Avron the S'wit]

Because I am at work and cannot watch that video: what, out of curiosity, does Vvardenfell look like? Are landmasses just that, randomly generated landmasses with no specific geographic features? I'm wondering what a sense destroyed chunk of Morrowind would look like into 4E...

[Fathis]

Vvardenfell ends abruptly, the dividing line goes north-south, cutting the Red Mountain in half. Some of the coastline is not accurate.

[AKB]

Then I'm going to assume that it was just to make sure that people looking over the mountains didn't see any vast empty void. They did it for Oblivion, and you could go through the other provinces back then as well. The only difference this time is that they said that they didn't automatically generate any cells, like they did in Oblivion. If they have to build it, why not build it right?

[Lynx2069]

My thoughts are its for DLC or a future ES game. Why go through the trouble of building a new engine if you couldn't use it on future games or more importantly consoles and obviously PC's as well.

I have my suspicion the DLC will involve the Thalmor and perhaps it will involve defending Skyrim on all borders, maybe adding a few new town outside the borders of Skyrim, would make the game feel larger then adding a new landmass entirely.

Lastly hasn't Bethesda said they have Bethesda Online Studios working on a game? If it were to be a ESMMO, then perhaps they're using the land generated for it to provide some unity between any potential MMO and Skyrim.

Edit: Its Zenimx Online Studios, but looking around there site, it appears to have concept art at the tops of the pages, anyone recognize them? They look very ES-ish...

[Sloady]

Arena 2.0? It's not unimaginable to believe that they'd maybe expand into most or all of those area's in DLC

[CorneliusFunk]

I'm still in the pessimistic (read: realistic) camp; I doubt Beth would drop the detail they've become so adept with making to go ahead with a continent-wide game. The only time I could imagine this happening would be for a scaled-down handheld game, perhaps, some sort of an Arena redux. Interesting idea, NightFather.

Lynx, the MMO rumours have been squashed for TES. They're lucid enough to realise it's not what the fans want (except the somewhat younger newcomers, perhaps). However as you said there is a new branch, the online studios, so no doubt they will have other online projects in the works. Did they do Brink or was that just Beth? I was genuinely relieved to hear Pete Hines shoot down the TES MMO idea; I couldn't imagine Tamriel with people running across the landscape screaming vulgarities with their names above their heads with meme references.

[OblivionDuruza]

I was actually reading about this the other day and pondering the implications. This is an estimation on how much does actually exist. It's quite a lot actually, but no Solstheim. SAtill, most of Hammerfell and Cyrodiil, and about half of High Rock and Morrowind, is a lot of Modding potential.

Edit: Haha, looks like Fathis and I have the same image, but from different places. Originally I thought they were different due to the differing urls.

[POMC S117]

The are that they have made would probably cover at least three provinces!

[Talamare]

perhaps they were testing engine potential

[Lynx2069]

Lynx, the MMO rumours have been squashed for TES. They're lucid enough to realise it's not what the fans want (except the somewhat younger newcomers, perhaps). However as you said there is a new branch, the online studios, so no doubt they will have other online projects in the works. Did they do Brink or was that just Beth? I was genuinely relieved to hear Pete Hines shoot down the TES MMO idea; I couldn't imagine Tamriel with people running across the landscape screaming vulgarities with their names above their heads with meme references.

Good! A TES MMO just dosen't sound like a good idea, I'm personally against it, and Pete Hines seems to be, but I worry about Zenimax and there excutives, Hines is the VP of Bethesda but not Zenimax right? I've worked for a Investmate firm who owns a controlling share of a large Publisher/Developer and at a certain point it ALWAYS comes down to money and money trumps creative control everytime.

Plus, I expect someone to purchase Zenimax in the next 12 months.

[OblivionDuruza]

Hope we aren't talking insider trading here guys .

One thing I do want to know on the subject, is with all that land generated, why isn't Solstheim there? Possibly because Bethesda has other plans for it perhaps?

[The_Noob]

It would be amazingly generous of Bethesda to make even some of that blank land into legit stuff.

However, a possible DLC expansion into Morrowind seems most likely. The gate to it, after all, is open. Of course, Oblvion did this also, so Bethesda is probably trolling us, as is a habit to them.

Say, how large were the Shivering Isles?

[Ganonloth30]

Wow thats actually pretty insane, i mean thats a lot of extra work they did putting in all of that landmass, and nobody can acess it without basically cheating? The detail they put into their games never ceases to amaze

[CorneliusFunk]

Noob, AFAIK Shivering was about a third of Cyrodiil in the game. Some largish fraction like that if I recall correctly from a gaming site ages back.

Re: ZeniMax and Hines: well, although ZM at the end of the day is calling the shots, we have to remember that Todd Howard has a fair amount of sway in the industry. I mean, ZM know that TES is successful, people want the same perfect formula, and that Beth seriously know exactly what they're doing. There seems to be a kind of professional trust there between the various companies/divisions of Beth's "family", so it's both my wish and my deduction that things aren't going to get radically different for TES.

That's odd about Solstheim - I was sure someone who'd explored Morrowind beyond the borders had come across it. I've yet to get around to trying this myself. As for Morrowind as a location for a sizeable DLC: well, that seems pretty ripe; we know Vvardenfell is literally post-apocalyptic (at least to some degree) and Argonians must inhabit at least the southern part (perhaps some Dunmer have returned from Solstheim to quietly sneak onto the northern shores again, since it's been upward of two hundred years since the events of The Infernal City).

I wouldn't call border hacks "cheating" as such because it doesn't give the player any kind of advantage (except maybe the height advantage from flying. Dur hur hur). It's more tweaking, IMO.

Thanks Duruza for that map!

[OblivionDuruza]

The Wiki claims that The Isles are roughly a quarter of Cyrodiil's size, and that Oblivion's game world is approximately 16 square miles (41 square kilometers) in size, so the Isles were about 4 square miles by that logic.

Skyrim's about the same size as Oblivion, although more dense, we might be talking similarly sized DLC, although if Beth is focusing on fewer, but larger, we might see a couple SI sized ones perhaps.

[VirtualWeasel]

I think it's Beth's way of supporting mods, honestly.
A real gift that they gave us. Thanks Bethy!

[Ryuhza]

Skyrim's about the same size as Oblivion, although more dense, we might be talking similarly sized DLC, although if Beth is focusing on fewer, but larger, we might see a couple SI sized ones perhaps.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what they said they wanted to do. I recall them saying they wanted to do something bigger than they'd ever done DLC wise.

[Maegfaer]

Sorry to shatter your dreams, but it's all only distant LOD. There is no WRLD data there, I visited it ingame and it doesn't have collision, you fall right through it. I also managed to import Skyrim's Tamriel worldspace heightmap into third party heightmapping applications, and it's really just Skyrim. It is 6964 * 5501 meters, which is 3.71 * 2.93 quads.

It was only made so that when you stand on high locations in Skyrim, that you don't stare into an empty abyss. It's not fit for a DLC, though ofcourse Bethesda does have the actual WLRD data stored somewhere. They could release a DLC outside of Skyrim yet in the same world space, but the distant LOD land in the game just can't be interpreted that there's a higher chance on that happening.